Although suspected in some circles of nurturing foreigner-friendly pinko tendencies, the BBC cannot be faulted for its patriotic way with programme titles. Just last week there were no fewer than three that featured the flag-waving phrase "Great British".

Where else might this trend lead? Great British Ironing, perhaps, or The Great British Cupboard? The Great British Pavement? The possibilities are mouthwatering. They certainly make you want to clear your throat.

Anyway, such questions were set aside in the final of The Great British Bake-Off as the nation's thoughts turned to whether the shortcrust pastry in the savoury picnic pie would induce another of Ruby's self-named "episodes". The tension was such that you could cut it with a spatula.

Perhaps flustered by the doubts raised over the substance of her cooking, Frances decided to put everything into her pie. Not so much in terms of effort as ingredients. The list was so long that it put you in mind of some medieval recipe that all but included braised fruit bat and pickled cloves.

In the event, Ruby won the battle of the pastry but fell victim to an overbaked wedding cake that also had the wrong icing and a colour scheme that, as Paul Hollywood put it, wasn't "unified enough". How do you come back from that? Well, you don't. Not at this level. If the cake was dry, her cheeks were not. The one-time favourite knew that her next dish was going to be humble pie.

As Kimberley had played it safe with a wedding cake that looked like a wedding cake, the right to speak in victory cliches – "dreams", "cloud nine", "sink in" – fell to Frances, who looked as if she hadn't slept in a year. Baking can do that to you.

What is the success of The Great British Bake-Off? Is it really the heartwarming picture of an idealised middle England, as some critics argue, or does it merely prove that the British, who once watched televised snooker and darts in our tens of millions, will follow anything as long as it's simple, competitive and features an outspoken expert? All I know is that like a radio show that examines visual art, a TV show that comes down to a matter of gustatory taste is a medium at curious odds with its message. If the proof is in the pudding, it's a pudding we never get to sample. Maybe this is the real attraction of all the culinary programmes that clog the schedules. In a lifestyle culture that is driven by a contradictory obsession with recipes and diets, the only way to reconcile the two is to watch and not eat.

Channel 4 continued what might be called its Great British Jerk-Off season with its latest onanistic offering, Date My Porn Star. This time three blokes – two straight (one in a wheelchair) and one gay – were taken to Los Angeles to meet the porn performers who were the objects of their online desire. Jessica Jaymes, Tanya Tate and Cody Cummings were the artists in question. In these uncertain economic times, this writer must take encouragement from the fact that the key to a lucrative porn career is an alliterative name.

Kevin, Jonathan and Danny set off to learn about porn. Production Company/PR

"Will it be a wet dream come true or their worst nightmare?" intoned the narrator in the standard arch style that told you, if you hadn't already guessed, that this was not going to be a psychological study of manufactured fantasies. Instead it was a manufactured character development, with each of the three men guided along an unconvincing arc from porn obsession to self-realisation.

Kevin, whose blind spot covered the entirety of his personality and is thus a gift to TV producers, walked out of a porn shoot and declared: "that was so sick". He meant it as the highest approbation. Wheelchair user Jonathan came across like some militant member of the Adam Smith Institute in his ideological support for the business of sexual exploitation. "Supply and demand," he stated enthusiastically, after witnessing a vulnerable teenager's introduction to the industry, "the laws of commerce."

All it took was exposure to an all-day gangbang and both of them were wolfing down their own words as if Frances had set them in a perfect shortcrust pastry. The sight of some unfortunate woman being monstered by a selection of LA's scuzziest pondlife made Kevin "fink about everyfing" and led the serially broken-hearted Jonathan to abandon porn for a more realistic vision of womanhood.

So we all grew. We all improved. We all learned something – most pressingly, never to watch another Channel 4 documentary with the word "porn" in the title.

Sometimes it's possible to come away from watching television with the impression that men, particularly British men, are doomed. Going by documentary evidence, we don't seem capable of doing anything but getting drunk and consuming porn. But it turns out that by comparison with Japanese men, the British are paragons of social functionality.

In No Sex Please, We're Japanese, we heard once again that the Japanese have all but given up on reproducing, preferring instead the non-procreative attractions of a digitalised virtual world. It was a disjointed, laboured film in which the presenter, Anita Rani, greeted every noteworthy aspect of Japanese culture with the expression "Wow! How cool is that?"

Not very cool, was the answer, but very, very geeky. So geeky, in fact, that a couple of thirtysomething men spoke of their total commitment to a transportable computer game called Love Plus, which features teenage girlfriend avatars to whom the men were hopelessly and creepily devoted.

It was a sad, morbid scene. This is where masculinity has retreated, one felt obliged to observe, into the lifeless vacuum of computer-programmed games. What hope is there for men? Is there anyone out there who can restore faith in the male of the species?

Step forward Mr Mitchell, Mr Burton and Musharaf in the final episode of Educating Yorkshire. The series has provided a fascinating insight into the realities of what the BBC would call Great British Education, with teachers having to combine the roles of pedagogue, life coach, social worker and prison guard.

There may have been legitimate reservations on occasion about teachers playing to the camera and pupils acting up in a manner that's exploited for the entertainment of viewers. But who could have watched the closing scene, in which Musharaf with his chronic stammer gave one of the most moving valedictory speeches since Lou Gehrig was forced to retire from the New York Yankees, without feeling as though the tennis ball lodged in your throat was telling you something profound about life and learning.

The doe-eyed Musharaf had been asked earlier in the programme what it was like going through school with a stammer.

"H… h… h… h… hard" was his tragicomic one-word answer.

And because the stammer has, perhaps cruelly, been a staple of comedy for centuries, the closing ceremony could so easily have seemed like a sketch from a Farrelly brothers film. But instead, as Musharaf graciously and heroically made his way through thanking Mr Burton, the other teachers and his fellow students, we glimpsed something of the amazing achievements enacted in our schools that don't ever show up in exams or assessments.

In one boy's struggle we also saw the aching depths and transforming joys of being human. It was a humbling and tearful sight, and in its own undeclared way, a great British moment.